ADST Burma Country Reader — three USIS Rangoon officers (1957–1963) do not name The Family of Man
Citation
Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST). “Burma — Country Reader.” Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, ADST, Arlington, VA. PDF compilation of oral-history interviews with Foreign Service officers who served in Burma. URL: https://adst.org/Readers/Burma-Myanmar.pdf. Direct fetch 2026-05-10 (cache /.scratch/adst-burma-reader.pdf, 1.21 MB, HTTP 200). Compilation includes interviews from c. 1989–2007.
Tier justification
Tier 2: ADST is a non-profit founded by retired Foreign Service officers; the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project is the principal U.S. oral-history collection of diplomatic personnel, conducted under structured interview protocols and indexed by post and date of service. The Country Readers are aggregated PDF compilations of named-officer interviews — primary in the sense that interviewees speak in their own voice about their own experience, secondary in that the interviews were conducted decades after the events. This is the standard scholarly Tier-2 source class for U.S. cultural-diplomacy field-post history. (See Wilson Center “Rethinking Cold War Burma” for one academic citation of ADST oral histories.)
Relevance
Direct evidence on the question: did The Family of Man exhibition tour to USIS Rangoon (Burma) in the 1957–1962 USIA Copy-1/Copy-2/Copy-4 window? The ADST Burma Country Reader contains the oral histories of three USIS Rangoon officers covering the entire window:
- Arthur W. Hummel Jr. — Public Affairs Officer, USIS Rangoon, 1957–1961 (later U.S. Ambassador to Burma 1968–1971). Interviewed 13 July 1989 by Dorothy Robins-Mowry. (Pages 20–24 of the PDF.)
- Cliff Forster — Information Officer, USIS Rangoon, 1958–1960. Interviewed 29 May 1990 by G. Lewis Schmidt. (Pages 28–30 of the PDF.)
- Morton Smith — Cultural Affairs Officer, USIS Rangoon, 1958–1963. “In Burma, I was an assistant CAO, in charge of exhibits, book programs, and visiting performers.” Interviewed in 1994 by Ed Findlay. (Pages 30–33 of the PDF.)
These three officers — including the CAO whose direct portfolio was exhibits — collectively document USIS Rangoon’s cultural-diplomacy programming across 1957–1963 in their own first-person voices. None of the three names The Family of Man, Steichen, or any photographic exhibition with that profile in their published interviews. This is the strongest Tier-2 negative evidence available for the question of whether the Burma stop in the issue-#156 brief actually occurred.
Key excerpts / pages
Hummel (PAO 1957–1961), pp. 22–23 of the PDF — listing of named cultural events that DID happen at USIS Rangoon during his tenure (verbatim from the PDF, read 2026-05-10):
Marian Anderson came to Burma and sang and was an absolute, smash hit.
We even had a small version of an American ballet company which came to Rangoon. This was very successful.
We in USIS had many active programs, including book translations, as usual. The newspapers used a lot of our materials, and the cultural centers and libraries were very popular and effective.
Hummel describes USIS Rangoon’s three libraries (Rangoon, Mandalay, Moulmein) and book-translation program in detail. He names Marian Anderson and an American ballet company as the headline cultural events of his 1957–1961 tenure. He does not mention any photographic exhibition, any Steichen exhibition, or The Family of Man.
Forster (Information Officer 1958–1960), pp. 28–30 — verbatim list of USIS programming Forster names:
So when we arrived the first coup had taken place and General Ne Win was in control. We left Burma two years later just before the second coup in 1961, when there was a real takeover by Ne Win.
While there, he became increasingly upset about the KGB and what they were up to in Burma … We were able to get around to all the media to invite them in to meet with Kaznachayev at USIS the following morning to tell his story.
Forster’s interview centres on the Ne Win 1958 caretaker government, the Kaznachayev defection (a Soviet Embassy officer who walked into the USIS Rangoon library to defect), and USIS Rangoon’s “nation-building” programs. He does not mention The Family of Man or any photographic touring exhibition.
Smith (assistant CAO 1958–1963), p. 30 — direct portfolio statement:
In Burma, I was an assistant CAO, in charge of exhibits, book programs, and visiting performers. I was only twenty-seven years old.
Smith’s interview discusses the press relationship with the Burmese newspaper editors, his Burmese-language proficiency, and his political-press operation. Despite his direct portfolio responsibility for “exhibits”, Smith does not in his published interview name The Family of Man, Steichen, or any specific photographic exhibition. He does not name any specific exhibit at all.
Shellenberger (Branch PAO Moulmein 1959–1962), pp. 33–35 — describes USIS Moulmein’s programming: a U.S. water ski troupe brought from East Asia, the Moulmein library, English-language pwei (festival) presentations. No mention of The Family of Man or photographic exhibitions.
O’Brien (PAO Rangoon 1960–1962), pp. 35–36 — describes the Rangoon library run by Zelma Graham and the closure of USIS facilities under Ne Win. No mention of The Family of Man.
Notes
- Direct fetch 2026-05-10, cache
/.scratch/adst-burma-reader.pdf(1.21 MB), pages 1–50 read directly. - The negative finding is methodologically significant. Three USIS Rangoon officers — covering the entire 1957–1963 USIA window in which The Family of Man’s Copy 1 / Copy 2 / Copy 4 were circulating — give detailed accounts of their cultural-diplomacy programming in their own first-person oral histories. They name specific cultural events: Marian Anderson’s recital, an American ballet company, a U.S. water ski troupe, USIS library programming, book translations, English-language teaching at festivals (pwei). None of them names The Family of Man. The CAO Smith, whose direct portfolio was exhibits, names no specific exhibition at all. This is consistent with — though does not by itself prove — the negative finding already documented in
src-indonesia-burma-tour-access-barrier: that Burma / Yangon / Rangoon does not appear in any tour-list source fetched in any round of this project, that the only “Rangoon” mention in the Wikipedia FoM article is in Carl Sandburg’s quoted Prologue (“The first cry of a baby in Chicago, or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon”), and that the C²DH lasting-legacy article does not name Burma in its expanded country sample. - What this source does not establish: absolute certainty that Family of Man never reached Rangoon. Oral histories are selective; an officer may not recall a specific exhibit; the published Country Reader is itself a compiled subset of a larger interview archive (the full ADST interviews are stored at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center). What the source establishes is: the standard scholarly U.S. oral-history compilation for Burma 1947–1998, fetched in this round, does not mention Family of Man in any of the five USIS Rangoon / Moulmein officer interviews covering 1957–1962. Combined with the other negative evidence in this project — Wikipedia tour-list (no Burma row), C²DH country sample (no Burma), CNA education portal (no Burma), Sandeen 1995 Google Books search (Burma matches 2 pages but snippet content not previewable) — the cumulative weight is that The Family of Man most likely did not reach Burma during the original USIA tour, and that the issue-#156 / issue-#210 “Burma / Yangon / Rangoon 1958” target may have entered the brief from a non-fetched secondary source.
- Sandeen 1995 — Burma matches in Google Books index but content not previewable. The cache
/.scratch/gb-sandeen-Burma.html(fetched 2026-05-10) returns “2 Seiten stimmen mit dem Suchbegriff “Burma” in diesem Buch überein” (2 pages match) — but the book is"has_scanned_text":falseso the snippet content is not previewable. The matches could refer to Carl Sandburg’s quoted Prologue (“Zamboango … Rangoon”) or to other context (e.g., a Burmese photograph in the show, Burmese photographers); they do not necessarily indicate a Burma tour stop. - What would reverse this finding: (a) a NARA RG 306 USIS Rangoon exhibit-tour log naming Family of Man in 1957–1962; (b) a Burmese contemporary press notice for 1957–1962 (the Nation, the Working People’s Daily, Guardian); (c) Sandeen 1995 body text directly opened (CDL borrow) showing a Burma tour-stop reference; (d) the full ADST interview transcripts at LoC AFC (the Country Reader is a compiled subset).
- Cross-reference:
src-indonesia-burma-tour-access-barrier(existing access-barrier record);src-wikipedia-fom-tour-list(no Burma row);src-c2dh-fomleg-lasting-legacy(no Burma in country sample);src-cna-education(no Burma in nine-country sample);research/world-tour.md§5, §9. - Perspective: U.S. Foreign Service oral-history primary-voice. Hummel was a career FSO who later became Ambassador to Pakistan and to China — he is a senior, credible witness. Forster and Smith were mid-career USIS officers in the same period. The interviews were conducted 1989–1994, c. 30–35 years after the events; recall limits apply. The Country Reader is editorially curated by ADST.